I asked the receptionist for the boss’ office, and she stuttered, not wanting to say. So, I did the next best thing and looked at the board above her.
I placed my guess on Claudius’ office being the one that was labelled Executive Suite. All the other offices had department names.
He’d told me once that sometimes you had to hide in plain sight.
I moved away from the reception desk and continued in my pursuit to the elevator even though she called after me.
I selected the fifth floor on the panel on the wall. The doors closed before the security guard could get to me.
Once the doors opened, I stepped out and headed to the only office door I could see. It had to be that. It had that inconspicuous look.
And I could feel him.
It was like my years of being without him gave me some sort of messed-up sense where I could feel him. Always.
I hated it.
I didn’t bother to knock. I just pushed the door. It flung right open, and there he was inside with four guys.
Before I could draw a breath, four guns were aimed at me.
Click-clack. That was the sound.
Claudius’ eyes went wide, and he stood up glowering at me like I was the one who had done something wrong.
Fuck him.
I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. I didn’t know what I should say, but I was going to say what I wanted to say. All of it. All of it, and this would be the end.
With the guns still trained on me, I walked into the room anyway.
I didn’t miss the surprised expression on the guy nearest Claudius. I also noticed that they all had tattoos of crosses on their necks. Claudius was the only one with the cross on his cheek.
“Guns down, men, and get out!” Claudius cried, looking at the men like some kind of feral animal.
The men did as he said and moved. Quickly.
Although I could see them watching me, I kept my gaze on him.
He waited until the door closed before he frowned.
“What in the ever-living fuck is the matter with you? You want to get yourself killed?” he screamed at me.
“Maybe, maybe I do. Isn’t that what you want?” There… God, I said it.
I said the thing that had been eating me up all this time, all these years.
The truth of the matter was, seven years ago, that psycho Goliath took me and Marissa. He put a bomb on her, and I didn’t know where they took her.
Claudius should have rescued her. But it was me he’d saved. If he hadn’t gotten me, then he would have probably had time to save her.
“How can you ask me that?” he cried.
“It’s true, and I don’t care who you are or what you could do to me. I don’t give a fuck. I don’t want anything from you, so don’t think you can just give me a building and a million dollars and it will make things all fine. It won’t.” My hands started shaking, and my knees wobbled. “I’m saying everything that should have been said, ever.”
“Good, let’s hear it,” he challenged, almost sounding like he wanted me to throw whatever I had at him.
“Yes, sure. I just wish I knew what to start with. How about the part where you didn’t have the patience to wait for me while I was in Europe, and I come home to not just find you engaged to my sister, but she’s pregnant?” I couldn’t help the sickly feel that clenched my stomach as I recalled the incident. It was the kind I wasn’t likely to forget. No wonder I was so messed up. “Or the part where you actually married her, and I had to pretend to be the happy maid of honor? Or no… I know, let’s take it right back. Maybe it’s the part where you made me think you loved me when really you were just screwing with my damn mind and you wanted her the whole time. Then years ago…” My voice shook as I remembered my recent stupidity. “Either you were bored or you missed Marissa so much you thought you’d screw with me even more, and I allowed you to do it.” A tear ran down my cheek, and I hated myself for it. I didn’t want to cry in front of him. And it was worse because all he did was look at me. “I allowed you to screw with me again. Then you just left me. What happened? Did you wake up and remember that you saved the wrong sister? I bet you wish it were me who got blown up.”
That was the first time I’d ever said it out loud. And it hurt me to physically say it, but it was the truth in my world.
I thought it was the truth for him too, but the minute the words left my lips, something changed in his expression. It darkened, showing every ounce of the dangerous man he was, and he growled. Reaching for the glass paperweight on his desk, he launched it, and it smashed against the wall, shattering into pieces.
Then he moved so quickly toward me I barely had time to register that he’d moved. I said I wasn’t scared of him, but the fear of God gripped me when he rushed at me and took hold of my shoulders and shoved me hard against the wall.
My breath stilled, and my heart pounded in my chest. His hair swished over his shoulders when he tilted his head to the side.
“Go ahead, kill me. It would hurt less than what you did before.” I didn’t know where my voice came from, but I spoke. I spoke through more tears that streamed down my cheeks.
“You think I want you dead? You think I would hurt you?” The pain in his voice spoke directly to my heart and held my attention.
My lips parted. I wanted to scream and say yes, but I couldn’t. It took a different set of guts to waltz up here the way I had like I was out for blood. It wasn’t like I didn’t know who he was. What he was. A mobster, a criminal. It took a different set of guts to face my fears.
But to me, he was still Claudius. Still the guy I met all those years ago who ordered the peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich so I’d remember him.
His eyes, flat and unspeaking, prolonged the moment, and I swore every single emotion I’d ever felt pulsed through me. Then his gaze dropped to my lips, and it was like he’d just remembered something.
When he looked back to me, I saw something else that I never thought I’d see again. It was the same lust-filled look he’d given me four years ago, the same lust-filled look he’d worn years before that when he took my virginity, and the same look he’d had every time we were together.
I pulled in a breath trying to clear my head, trying desperately to fight the pull of the spell that was about to take me. But… it was too late.
It was already riding on the tail end of that pulse of emotion. Reaching my soul.
As he lowered to my lips, I moved to him too. Even though my brain screamed at me, telling me to run, run far away and never dare look back. I moved to him, giving in to the call of passion. I moved to him and lost myself just like that first day I met him.
His lips crushed down hard to mine, and that grip on my shoulders tightened painfully. It was the kind of pain, though, that I could relish because he was holding me like he was trying to get closer to me. Like he couldn’t get close enough.
The strong hardness of his lips sent spirals of ecstasy through my entire being, and the heady sensation to devour me with the cruel ravishment of his mouth made me return the kiss with reckless abandon. I abandoned everything. All that I said, all that I felt, and it was just us. His release of my shoulders allowed me to run my hands through his hair the way I used to, and he’d drop to the crook of my neck. He did it, and it could have been that we were always like this. Shivers of delight coursed through my soul as he touched me and kissed me, tearing at my clothes. Tearing at my soul.
The little blouse I wore came off and went flying somewhere. He practically ripped my bra off me and filled his palms with my breasts, squeezing and kneading, making me moan against his lips. His lips, which barely left mine.
We kissed some more with that raw, hungry desire, then he pressed his cock into my abdomen and leaned down real close to my ear. He pushed harder, and my knees buckled.
“Remember this, Angel, the next time you think I don’t want you. This is what you do to me. Only you.”
All I could do was star
e.
All I could do was stare as his words sunk in.
Right now, I wanted him too badly to really think about what he was saying to
me.
I arched my back into the wall as he pressed me up against him and went to his knees with a wicked, sinful smile. He slid my skirt right up to my waist, parted my legs, and moved my panties to the side so he could slide his fingers into my core. I gasped at the mind-numbing sensation and cried out when he pressed his face right between my thighs and pushed his tongue into me.
Fuck, it was too much, and yet I wanted more. He licked the already hard, sensitive nub of my clit and continued licking in short even strokes, tasting me. I ran my hands through his hair, holding him there, relishing the thrilling wave of orgasm that built, rose, and took me. It took me to a higher plane of ecstasy, and I could barely breathe.
He didn’t give me a chance to recover. Or think.
He stood, undid his pants, and pushed them and his boxers down, unleashing the massive length of his cock. I needed him, wanted him, craved him inside me, and no sense on earth could reach me now.
I didn’t want it to.
Lifting my leg, he pushed the fat head of his cock against the folds of my entrance. Taking my waist, he gripped me tight and slammed into me. I gasped again against the sensation of him filling me right up. Filling me and stripping away everything but my need for him. My passage quaked and trembled when he started to move, driving deeper, pumping faster, holding me tighter so he could ram into me and fuck me harder.
I moaned against his relentless thrusts and tried to meet him beat for beat, but I couldn’t. It felt too good for me to do anything but allow him to take me.
He started rutting into me like an animal, raw and primal. I wrapped both legs around him and made him press harder into the wall. My hair tangled with his when I leaned down to kiss him, and he caught my face. Cupping my cheek, kissing me back like he was trying to taste me.
Warmth filled me, reaching out to my heart. The kind of heart warmth a person felt when they were in love or happy, but I was neither. I didn’t know.
He’d fooled me into thinking it though. I could have easily believed it was true, because this felt real. This intimate kiss, this intimate moment we shouldn’t be having.
The moment broke when he groaned and sped up, jackhammering into me, and I arched back again, crying out from the intense pleasure that wracked my soul.
A greedy orgasm gripped this time, making my body its slave, making me dizzy with desire. He groaned again, deep and low, coming in a rush of hot cream that poured inside me.
He stayed inside me, allowing my body to milk him while he returned his lips to mine.
My heart… it was beating so fast. Wild against his.
He held me close until we both calmed.
That was when reality came rushing back on me.
I expected to have that What did I do? moment. That moment of shame to at least feel freaked that I’d just had unprotected sex with a man I was supposed to hate, but it didn’t come.
It never came because no matter how much I wanted to fool myself or tell myself that I hated him, I didn’t.
I slid off him, and he seemed to switch to autopilot. He grabbed some tissues from a Kleenex box and to my horror started cleaning me up, then himself.
I just watched him. He fixed his pants and gathered my clothes, handing them to me.
“Get dressed. You’re coming home with me.” He ran a hand through his hair.
“What?” I narrowed my eyes at him, wondering if he was being serious.
“You’re coming home with me.”
“What if I say no?”
He pressed his hand just over my head and got close again. “Then we stay here and fuck to death, Angel Doll. You choose. I don’t mind either. It’d be a great way to go.” He cupped my right breast and ran his finger over the tight, taut nipple. “What’ll it be, Angel? Answer quickly. I’m getting hard again.”
I lost my mind again. It was him touching me. “Take me home.”
At my answer, his eyes clouded over in a sexual haze, a sexual haze that spoke of the wild pleasure that awaited me.
Chapter 7
Claudius
* * *
Jesus Christ.
I didn’t know what the hell had possessed me earlier, but it was like suddenly all my reasonings and logic on why I shouldn’t be with Ava made no sense.
It was what she said that snapped me.
All that she believed; it was a lie. Lies I made her believe. And why wouldn’t she believe it all? There was no surprise. All that she said to me was exactly what it looked like.
It was reasonable to assume all of it because that was how I behaved. Like she never mattered to me.
I wasn’t like this, never like this with anyone. I didn’t show my true thoughts or allow anyone to get under my skin. That was what made me ruthless. It gave me the ability to switch and adapt when I needed to. Emotions were trouble. Especially ones like mine.
It was late, really late. As to what time it was, I didn’t know. All I knew was, I’d indulged in the angel six more times, touching her in all the ways I wanted to, feasting on her body in all the ways I wanted to, getting lost in her perfection in every which way that I wanted to.
She fell asleep in my bed. The bed I’d first made love to her in.
I sat on the window ledge in my boxers watching her, committing her to memory as I tried to figure out what the hell I was going to do.
What the hell I was doing now.
Probably messing with her life even more because truth be told, I was scared. Scared to lose her. Lose her forever.
Marissa had never come to this house. This was the place I’d shared with Luc. The mansion we’d called our bachelor pad.
Today, I lived here by myself.
Marissa and I had lived near the beach when we were together. I got the place after she told me she was pregnant.
As I looked over at Ava, asleep in the soft moonlight, the moonlight that made her hair look silver, I remembered it all.
The crushed look of pain on her face when she found out Marissa and I were together, and she just took it. She put on a front like she was fine. Like a robot, no feelings, no emotion, she just went along with what was going on.
The whole ordeal had lasted close to two years but felt like forever.
Luc was right. She deserved the truth. The whole truth. I did owe her that. My gaze drifted to the nightstand next to the bed. In the top drawer was a diary I kept with all the sightings ever of Goliath. At one point, I’d verged on insanity, going deep into research, looking for all the places he might be. And where he wasn’t.
It wasn’t healthy, and was I going to spend the next ten years living like this?
The woman in my bed made me want to live. I wanted her just like I knew I would.
I knew it, preempted it. I knew that anything more than the shadows would make me want more. And look at me. Here I was. I’d had my fair share of her, and still I wanted more.
She shuffled, and a soft moan sounding like a little purr hummed from her lips. I watched her turn and reach out her hand, searching. Searching for me.
I missed that. I missed this.
I always knew what we’d had was too good for me. It always felt like I’d lived in some kind of a dream or a bubble and one day, the fucking bubble would pop and land me on my ass.
When it did happen, I was hardly surprised, but I was still shocked at the fucked-up way it happened.
Ava’s delicate fingers ran over the silk of the sheets. She wasn’t awake yet, and it was fascinating to watch what she did in her in-between. Between asleep and awake.
It was nice to see that she still wanted me.
We could lie to ourselves, but the truth was the truth. The silky sheet slid down the toned flat of her stomach, showing off the massive globes of her breasts. The little light pink tips of her nipples were hard, ready and aching to be sucked.
An awareness seemed to wash over her when her hands came away with nothing but the sheets. She thought I’d left again. I could see it in her reaction, and then she bolted upright.
She stared me straight in the eye as her beautiful features softened, but then it was like reality seeped in. I moved to her quickly before it could take her from me.
“Claudius,” she breathed as I scooped her up and pulled her close to me so I could plant kisses along her neck.
“Shhhhh.” I kissed the crook of her neck and worked my way down to her chest.
“I’m at your place,” she whispered more to herself than me.
“I want you.” Nothing was truer.
“Me?”
“You, Angel.”
“Claudius—”
I covered her lips with mine and kissed her. A soft moan escaped her lips when I sucked on her tongue and tugged on her bottom lip.
“Lie down for me, Angel Doll.” One more time. Or whatever we had strength for. I could feast on her forever. I really could.
She did as I said, resting back against the stack of pillows.
I smiled, loving the way she submitted to me. I lowered my mouth to her right breast and took the diamond-hard nipple into my mouth. I was the first man to do this to her. The first to have her, and I wished that I could have been her only.
I thought I’d hit the fucking jackpot when she told me she was a virgin, then I instantly felt like she deserved better than some dirty gangster who wanted to devour every piece of her.
Then I couldn’t resist her. Like now. Just like now.
I sucked and tasted, licking and lapping at her nipples, working the tips to life with my tongue. She loved it.
“You like that, Doll?” Doll, she had been my angel doll, and she still was.
“I love it,” she moaned. Running her fingers through my hair, just the way she used to.
I moved to the neglected breast and sucked, giving it the same attention, allowing myself to get drawn right back into this blissful existence that we’d created.
Dirty Hearts: A Bad Bod Mafia Romance Page 6